TVPaint Animation

TVPaint Trailer - edited by Mark Chong

2012-01-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

Mark Chong put together this "trailer" sampling various projects made with TVPaint Animation:

How to Eat Your Apple - by Erick Oh

2011-10-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

Animated in TVPaint Animation -

How to eat your Apple from Erick Oh on Vimeo.

Pablo Navarro - Venus and the Sun rough animation in TVPaint

2011-10-04T05:09:00.000-07:00

Rough animation by Pablo Navarro from the short film "Venus and the Sun". Animated boar creature combined with live action.

Animation drawn with Wacom Cintiq 21ux tablet in the paperless animation application TVPaint Animation 9.5.

Go to Pablo Navarro's blog http://pablonavarro.wordpress.com to see his WIP rough tests with tie-downs.

To download higher quality .mp4 file of this animation click HERE .

"Jazzed" a film by Anton Setola

2011-07-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

As seen on Cartoon Brew :

Bold colors and playful visual rhythms merge in Anton Setola’s Jazzed, a film animated in TVP Animation. Finished in 2008, Jazzed had a long festival run and was posted on-line yesterday by the filmmaker.

More info on Anton's blog: http://antonsetola.blogspot.com/

Here is an interview with Anton Setola about the making-of "Jazzed" -

Jazzed de Anton Setola by asblCinergie

Gobelins grad films 2011 - made using TVP Animation

2011-07-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

As seen on the TVP Animation User Forum , here's another crop of grad films from Gobelins , made using TVP Animation.

Google for the blogs of the individual students who worked on these films; some beautiful and inspiring work on their blogs.

(do yourself a favor and switch these to HD mode and watch full screen)

À Travers la Brume
(Through the Fog)
Two brothers are hunting a legendary creature. As they hunt, the fog separates them...

A film by Théo BOUBOUNELLE, Violaine BRIAT, Marie-Clémence GAUTHIER, Clément GIRARD, Aude GUIBOURT, Clara VOISIN, Maïté XIA

--------

Les Chiens Isolés
(Lonely Dogs)

On an oil platform, a story of friendship between two workers is compromised by the insanity paranoiac of one of them.

A film by Rémi BASTIE, Nicolas DEGHANI, Jonathan DJOB-NKONDO, Paul LACOLLEY, Nicolas PEGON, Jérémy PIRES, Kevin MANACH

-------

Who's Afraid of Mr.Greedy ?

A blind man comes to get back his identity, stolen by an ogre while he was a child.

A film by Simon BOUCACHARD, Jean-Baptiste CUMONT, Sylvain FABRE, Guillaume FESQUET, Adeline GRANGE, Maxime MARY, Julien ROSSIRE

http://whosafraidofmrgreedy.blogspot.com/

---------

FUR

Banned from his town because of his animality, a wolf man decides to make this segregation come to an end.

A film by François BARREAU, Marion DELANNOY, Claire FAUVEL, Rachid GUENDOUZE, Vincent NGHIEM, Benoit TRANCHET

--------

Eleanor

For Eleanor, the joy of living among other people is out of reach because of her extreme introversion, she shuts herself away in a depressive routine, with her cat as her only support, until the latter, hopeless for her, decides to leave home...

A film by Chloé BURY .

--------

.

"Rain Town" by Hiroyasu Inshida

2011-04-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

"Rain Town" by Hiroyasu Inshida

(if you click through to the YouTube page I suggest switching it to 720p HD mode for better image quality)

The opening titles say:

"In this town, since who knows when, rain has never stopped.
Residents moved out to suburbs and high ground around
"rain town."
People's memories are now deeply submerged.
But into this forgotten rainy town
sometimes, someone wanders."

Graduation film by Hiroyasu Inshida made at Kyoto Seika University.

Alf Prøysens Barnesanger by Sandes Media

2011-04-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

Saw this on CartoonBrew today:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/music-vid...wegian-tv.html

And also on the TVP Animation Community Forum , where they report that the animation and coloring was done with TVP Animation:

http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4750

So the animation is actually hand-drawn, but paperless , drawn in TVP Animation using Wacom tablets. BG's were painted in Photoshop. (although they could have used TVP Animation to paint the fully-rendered BG's as well)

The director , Hans Jørgen Sandnes , writes:

Quote:

"...based on the songs of famed Norwegian singer/songwriter Alf Prøysen (1914 – 1970). The series is hand-drawn, made in-house by me and my five collegues. The episodes are short “music-videos” following Prøysens original recordings. We’re very passionate about our work, trying to master the medium of traditional 2D animation.”

Trailer for the television series:

Line test of a scene animated paperlessly in TVP Animation:

Making-of progression video showing line test to final color:

It's interesting that for publicity purposes in the making-of video (above) they have taken steps to disguise the digital origins of the drawings by adding some fake "flipping paper" effects to the animation.

I think I understand why this is done for the general public consumption: the minute you tell non-animation people "we used a digital program to do the animation" many people have this crazy idea stuck in their head : "ah-ha, the computer does it all" , as if the someone simply types in a command and pushes a button , then the computer program animates the scene. Whereas people still understand that if something is hand-drawn an artist is responsible for creating it.

It is difficult for many people to grasp the idea that there can be hand-drawn animation made on a computer , which is virtually the same process as hand-drawn animation on paper, except the lines are drawn directly into a program like TVP Animation using a wacom tablet, instead of drawn on paper and scanned/photographed.

Hand-drawn , in TVP Animation.

-----------

Some additional comments from the director/lead animator, Hans Jorgen Sandes, were posted on the TVP Animation Community User Forum:

http://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4750

Quote:

I'm so glad you're using this on the TVPaint page. Because, it's ALL sketched, animated and coloured in TVPaint. The backgrounds are PhotoShop, and the composite is in AppleMotion. We're working on the subject of painting the backgrounds in TVP as well. The composite is very minimal, and AppleMotion works great with FinalCut.

http://barnas-ark.blogspot.com/2010/08/hos-oss.html

Since others are so interested in our process, I will make a post on how we're working. I'll also include how the animation is actually done in the TVP software. I'll post it on your forum and my blog.

Anyway, feel free to share this information : ) Looking forward to hear from you again!

All the best,

Hans

As promised the lead animator/ director of this piece, Hans J. Sandnes has provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse at their work process using TVP Animation at his studio Sandnes Media.

He writes:

"We're a small team: an animator, an inbetweener, a background-artist, a compositor , and a producer. Using TVPaint means we're still making hundreds of unique drawings. We're sketching, erasing and re-doing drawings. But we don't have to spend time on scanning the drawings, numbering them, line-testing them and archiving them. In a way, TVPaint helps us doing what we like. And takes away the unnecessary steps.

Here's an in-depth look at how we do it. " :

http://barnas-ark.blogspot.com/p/paperless-animation.html

"Song of the Sea" teaser - Tomm Moore

2011-03-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

Tomm Moore, the director of the recently released "The Secret of Kells" , is at work on a new film called "Song of the Sea" .

On his production blog Tomm Moore mentioned that they are using TVP Animation to animate the film paperlessly.

Here's the first teaser trailer:

Song Of The Sea - Conceptual Trailer from Cartoon Saloon on Vimeo.

This is a Cartoon Saloon production.

Music by kíla.

LE PHARE (THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER) - Gobelins student film

2011-03-04T20:42:00.000-08:00

LE PHARE (THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER), animated film made by David FRANCOIS, Rony HOTIN, Jérémie MOREAU, Baptiste ROGRON, Gaëlle THIERRY, Maïlys VALLADE in 2009 at GOBELINS- l'école de l'image . TVP Animation was used to make this film. (some 3D objects in the film created using Maya).

Premières Plumes

2010-11-12T06:45:00.000-08:00

Short film by Chloé Bonnet, Elsa Boyer, Marie-Aurélie Magro, Maxime Martin, Mélanie Robert , students at Ecole LISAA in Paris.

Made with TVP Animation.

In this making-of video there are several shots of the students drawing with Wacom tablets in TVP :

Making Of "Premières Plumes" from Chloé Bonnet on Vimeo.

"Le Royaume" - new Gobelins School film

2010-09-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

"Le Royaume" is one of the recent 2010 vintage films made at the Gobelins School in Paris using TVP Animation.

The film is by Gobelins students De Nuno ALVES-RODRIGUES, Oussama BOUACHERIA, Julien CHHENG, Aymeric KEVIN, Sébastien HARY, Franck MONIER, Ulysse MALASSAGNE.

On the TVP User Forum there were these details posted about the production:

In "Le Royaume", they partly animated on paper and scanned the drawings to TVP for coloring , but because of the lack of time (scanning, scan-clean, etc ... there is no high-speed batch scanner available for students at the Gobelins school.), they ended up animating the rest of the film directly into TVP Animation (with Wacom tablets) and were able to finish the project on time.

Color Script and other "making of" material about "Le Royaume" -

Making of 'Le Royaume'

-

La Chambre Renversée - music video

2010-09-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

Animated music video of the song La Chambre Renversée by Julien Ribot . Animated using TVP Animation by studio Doncvoilà, animation by Philippe Massonnet, Kevin Audi-Grivetta , and Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet

"Toki" by Golgoth Studios - Made with TVP Animation

2010-09-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

Golgoth Studio is a new independant video game studio based in France. It is the aim of this teacm to keep 2D gaming alive within this 3D world, by the making of 2D fully hand-animated games in High Definition, for digital platforms.

Golgoth Studio has re-made "Toki", a video game originally released in 1989, on Arcade Game, with a poor man transformed into an ape, who will fight many bad guys and monsters to save the princess Miho, trapped by the evil sorcerer Vokimeldo.

This funny platform-game remake should be available first on Playstation Network in April 2010, then later Wii.

The animation was made with TVP Animation. Here is a trailer comparing scenes from the original "Toki" (c. 1989) with the new version:

Rough Animation cycle, then cleaned-up and colored in TVP:

Rough Animation frames from TVP :

"My Dog Tulip" by Paul & Sandra Fierlinger

2010-09-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

The independent animated feature film "My Dog Tulip" was animated by Paul Fierlinger and painted by Sandra Fierlinger.

The film was made paperlessly with TVP Animation.

Here's a Making-of video about "My Dog Tulip" where you can see Paul's studio set up with a Wacom tablet and multiple monitors:

Recently Paul and Sandra Fierlinger have also completed a series of animated PSA's "Shelter Stories" based on the work of Mutts cartoonist Patrick McDonnell . These are also animated paperlessly with TVP -

July 2010 11 Second Club Winner - "I'm Alone" by Arthur Gil Larsen

2010-08-15T08:04:00.001-07:00

Winner of the July 2001 "11 Second Club" animation competition , by Arthur Gil Larsen. Animated paperlessly using a Wacom tablet , drawing directly into TVP Animation.

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/july10/winner/

"Communicate" by Eric Oh

2010-08-11T10:31:00.001-07:00

"Communicate" (aka "Hello") by Eric Oh. Animated using TVP Animation

"Vegeterrible" by Benjamin Nielsen and Henrik Sønniksen

2010-02-19T06:10:00.000-08:00

This film was made as a graduate film by Benjamin Nielsen and Henrik Sønniksen at The Animation Workshop. They used TVP Animation to animate the film.

Production blog: Vegeterrible

"Charlie Bit Me" - Animation by Lou Dellarosa

2009-10-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

Great little dialogue test animated by Disney/ILM/Dreamworks animator Lou Dellarosa . Paperless animation using TVP Animation with Cintiq tablet.

©2009 Lou Dellarosa

Hades Pencil Test - by Rasmus Norgaard

2009-10-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

A paperless animation line test animated by Rasmus Norgaard using "Mirage" ( the predecessor to TVP Animation) . This was animated with a Wacom Intous 3 tablet. It was originally posted on the old Mirage forums.

Since Mirage has been sold back to TVPaint Development Co. and has now been improved and updated as TVP PRO 9 I thought it would be good to post this here. Everything that could be done with Mirage (and a lot more ) can be done with TVP :

(click on the image to view animation)-

FreeVideoCoding.com

-

Second Class by Boris Belghiti

2009-10-11T07:57:00.000-07:00

Senior graduation film made by Boris Belghiti at the Emile Cohl school in 2008. Made with TVP Animation software.

'The Apple & the Worm' feature film made with TVP

2009-09-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

The Apple & the Worm

This new feature film was made with TVP Animation. Animation was done paperlessly in TVP with Wacom tablets.

I don't understand a word of the Danish dialogue in the trailer, but it looks very funny.

THE APPLE AND THE WORM TRAILER 01 VO by Mister3ZE

In this interview the animation director for the film, Mads Juul, discusses how TVP Animation was utilized to make "The Apple & the Worm" feature:

Interview with animation director Mads Juul

Another article about "The Apple & the Worm" --Click Here --

-

BugBox Animation - Coke commercials animated in TVP

2009-08-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

Coke commercials made by BugBox Animation Studio. The character animation in these spots was done with TVP Animation .

"Love and Anarchy" Helsinki International Film Festival

2009-08-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

Animated trailer for Helsinki International Film Festival "Rakkautta & Anarkiaa". Which means "Love and Anarchy", and that was the theme of the film. The film was directed by Eliza Jäppinen and Falconauts and animated by Anima Boutique).

TVPaint was used for the 2D-character animation, Maya for 3D animation, After Effects for FX animation and compositing.

"Beton" by Ariel Belinco and Michael Faust

2009-08-19T05:10:00.000-07:00

"Beton" by Ariel Belinco and Michael Faust , animated with TVP Animation:

Here is a high-quality Quicktime excerpt to show the painterly textures accomplished with TVP.

(click on the image to view the animation)

Directing, Script and Animation: Ariel Belinco & Michael Faust

Original Music: Mikael Berkowitsch
Sound Design: Michael Goorevich

Project Supervisors: Van den bergh Roelof, Kaminski Hanan

America Israel Cultural Foundation / Bezlalel Academy of Art & Design, Israel / Utrecht School of Arts, Holland

Here is the entire film:

Béton & Apartheid: film d'animation Ariel Belinco by francemulticulturelle-org

Bouncing EyeBall - TVP Animation by Real Solleck

2009-05-15T11:42:00.001-07:00

A very entertaining variation on the ol' bouncing ball exercise : Bouncing Eye Ball animated in TVP by "The Real Solleck" .

Quicktime:

YouTube:

"Joust" Animatic by Mike Koizumi

2008-04-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

Found this amazing animatic posted on the TVP Animation User Forum . Animator Mike Koizumi writes:

"This is my first post and I wanted to share with you an animatic I made with the old Mirage program. I used the demo to create this and finished it in three weeks. It features a battle between a griffon rider and an undead dragon rider.

When I discovered that Mirage had been discontinued I was saddened because I had hoped to purchase it to create more animated works. Recently, I learned that the developers of Mirage had created TVPaint ! It looks fantastic and there seems to be many improvements since the old Mirage. I'm looking forward to testing out the demo soon and I'm sure I will be purchasing the software as well."

Drawn with "Mirage" (an earlier version of TVP Animation, but essentially the same software as TVP) -

"Eco Homo" - animated film by Greg Lawon

2008-04-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

"Eco Homo" , Directed by Greg Lawson

Made entirely with "Aura" (an earlier version of TVP Animation) in 2002.

(click on the image to play the movie) -

FreeVideoCoding.com

"Maestro Cuisine" by LISAA Students

2008-04-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

Short film "Maestro Cuisine" animated in TVP Animation by students at LISAA (L'Institut Superieure des Arts Appliques) a French school with campuses in Paris, Rennes, Nantes, and Strasbourg.

"Maestro Cuisine" Credits:

Julien Ducher (decoration, background), Romain Verdier (animation), Kim Marc Huynh (animation)

Jean-Jacques Chen - "The Sword and the Paintbrush"

2008-04-02T05:41:00.000-07:00

"The Sword and the Paintbrush" by Jean- Jacques Chen , animated and colored in TVP Animation.

Here is a graduation film made at the Visual Arts National University of La Cambre in Brussels, Belgium.

It was created and drawn by Jean Jacques Chen also well known as "L'apprenti roi des singes".

Interview with Jean Jacques Chen

Quicktime .mov version on the TVP web site;

"The Sword & the Paintbrush" Quicktime --Click HERE --

.

Labor - by Trung Lac

2008-04-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

Rough animation reel for film "Labor" by Trung Lac , a traditional animation student at Academy of Art University, San Francisco.

Paperless Animation with Cintiq tablet drawn directly into TVP Animation -

Set against the rural backdrop of America, LABOR delves into the lives of two strangers that meet at a train depot one day. A young pregnant woman, who is coming to grips with the burdens of parenthood, confronts a struggling umbrella salesman about his unrewarding career. Their encounter, however, leaves both of them with hope for a better future.

LABOR is the graduate thesis film of aspiring animator and director Trung Lac. The film was based on a personal experience that happened to him while he was struggling to find work as an animator in Florida. He hopes the message of the film inspires others to continue to follow their dreams no matter what the obstacles are.

The short was digitally hand-drawn and animated on a Wacom Cintiq using a bitmap-based animation program called TVP Animation.

Bear Line Test - Jeremy Hopkins

2008-04-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

Animation from a film being made by Jeremy Hopkins.

Animated paperlessly with a Cintiq tablet in TVP Animation -

Rony Hotin Demo Reel

2008-03-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

Demo reel by Rony Hotin. Most of the shots in this reel were animated with TVP Animation (besides the obvious CG animation in the last 1/3rd of the reel) -

--------

Animated by Rony Hotin with TVP Animation. Logo for the TVPaint.com web site.

This clip and the other clips on this blog were animated paperlessly by drawing directly into TVP Animation using a Wacom tablet or a tablet PC . (or Wacom Cintiq tablet.) The animation is hand-drawn using traditional animation principles, but no paper was used.

Kid Rocket Clean-Up in TVP Animation by Jeff Baker

2008-03-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Jeff Baker rough animated this on paper, then imported to TVP for clean-up.

Stop-Motion with TVP Animation

2008-03-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

This is a Clay animation film made by school-age children using TVP Animation. Although TVP is used primarily as a "paperless" animation system for drawing directly into the program with a Wacom tablet, the program also has a video frame-capture feature and onion-skinning which permits Stop-Motion animation. In this film the students made good use of TVPaint's "green screen" chroma key feature to place the fish into the sets for the swimming shots . They also used TVP to add effects animation such as the bubbles .

In addition to frame-capturing the clay animation, they used TVP to animate the titles and the small school of fish swimming in the first shot.

"Le Chat Noir" TVP Animation

2008-03-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

A short film animated with TVP Animation (BG's done in Painter) made by students at Lycée technique des Arts et Métiers in Luxembourg.

Here are some scenes done by one of the animators, Rony Hotin :

Sc. 9 Line Test , animated with TVP Animation:

Sc. 9 completed in color:

The entire film of "Le Chat Noir" :

"Lucien" , short film animated with TVP Animation

2008-03-26T14:00:00.001-07:00

"Lucien" a short film animated using TVP Animation by Nathalie Corcessin, Djamel Meslem, Pierre-Julien Vandenburie, students at LISAA (L'Institut Superieure des Arts Appliques).

Mark Chong- Work In Progress

2008-03-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

Not animation, but a good time lapse demonstration of the rough sketching and clean-up capabilities of TVP Animation by illustrator/animator Mark Chong. The time lapse was captured using the stroke recorder embedded in TVPaint. Mark has some great digital drawing tutorials on his blog Ten-Minute Drawing Tutorials.

Here's another illustration inked in TVPaint by Mark Chong:
(click on the image to see it larger)

"Santa Dance" - Shawn McInerney

2008-03-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Shawn McInerney animated this e-card using TVP Animation.

Shawn writes:

"I drew it all digitally with a Cintiq. I used TVP Animation to do the pencil tests, and then imported the drawings to Toon Boom for the cleanup, ink, and paint."

(the advantage to clean-up and ink & paint in Toon Boom is because Toon Boom is a vector application which allows exporting to smaller .SWF files , which is important for making animation which is primarily web-based such as e-cards. I have also found that it is effective to rough and clean-up in TVPaint at high resolution , then export the drawings to Adobe Illustrator for conversion from bitmap to vector lines , then import the vectorized line drawings into ToonBoom or Flash for coloring. If the clean-up drawings from TVPaint are tight enough and drawn at a high enough resolution they can also be imported directly to ToonBoom using Toon Boom's "Import & Vectorize" function which will auto trace the bitmap drawings to vector format. Again, this is helpful if very small file size and exporting to .SWF file format is important for fast playback on the web.)

EDIT: if the embedded link for this clip is down, click on the following link to see the animation on Shawn McInerney's site:

http://www.moosemouse.com/sdAnim.htm

(click image to view animation) -

FreeVideoCoding.com

"SnowMotion" by David Meslin

2008-03-26T10:49:00.000-07:00

Animated by UCLA Animation Workshop grad David Meslin, working directly in TVP with a Wacom tablet.

This is a good demonstration of a more "painterly" approach that can be used with TVP Animation.

Trung Lac - TVP Animation

2008-03-26T10:35:00.000-07:00

Animation tests using TVP Animation by Trung Lac an animation student at The Academy of Art , San Francisco, CA.

Trung Walking from 2DANM8R on Vimeo.

Shot 8 Magician Rough Animation from 2DANM8R on Vimeo.

TP Shot 4 Rough Animation from 2DANM8R on Vimeo.

Chad Essley - TVP Animation

2008-03-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

Very fun piece of paperless animation by Chad Essley drawn with a Tablet PC (Motion Computing LE 1700) animated directly in TVP Animation:

(this clip tends to load a little slow, so on the first pass through it can "stick" a bit, so let it load and play through once then watch it on a loop) -

Just in case this plays back a bit sticky here's the original link on the TVP site:

Chad Essley HAIRCUT animation

Rusty Mills' "Gotcha Covered"

2008-03-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

Rusty Mills is a classically trained animator who has been on the forefront of embracing the new paperless animation technology . Here are some scenes from Rusty's work-in-progress reel for a film called "Gotcha Covered".

Rusty is animating this on a Motion Computing tablet PC using Mirage.
(a previous version of TVP which is no longer available, but very similar to the present TVP Animation). He did most of this animation while commuting on the train into Los Angeles . Now that's a portable animation tool !

©2008 Rusty Mills

Notice how Rusty's rough animation looks virtually the same as traditional pencil-on-paper animation. There is no discernible difference in this that screams out "digital". The drawings look very natural and organic, like real pencil sketches.

"Patriot" by Roy Iddan

2008-03-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

New animated short made with TVP Animation by Roy Iddan.

"Stranger" by Alon Boroda

2008-03-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

Short film "Stranger" by Alon Boroda , made while a student at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. Animated in "Mirage" (which is the name TVP was marketed under from 2003 - 2005 when it was being distributed by BHS. Mirage as such is no longer available, but TVP is the same as Mirage , only better, with more features) .

Eric Goldberg : "Racetrack" Drew Carey's Green Screen

2008-03-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

This piece wasn't animated directly with TVP or Mirage , but does show how TVP can be used to color animation with a "hand-painted" look. The drawings were done on paper , then scanned into Mirage (an earlier version of TVP) for coloring.

There's more about that in the linked article from AWN , so take a look . I think that the Racetrack segment from Green Screen is as fine and funny a piece of animation as you're likely to see , so just for the pure enjoyment factor I wanted to share this .

--------

"Racetrack" is a beautifully animated piece by Eric Goldberg, as a segment of Drew Carey's Green Screen Show.

"Drew Carey's Green Screen Show" featured Drew Carey as the host , and an ensemble cast of improv actors doing skits in front of a "green screen" . After the live actors had done their stuff , the footage was handed over to various animators (coordinated by Acme Film Works) to embellish the skit with animation. The show never really took off , and like all improv sketches there were hits and misses . One of the hits, in fact probably the strongest piece that came out of this show, was a sequence called "Racetrack" animated by master animator Eric Goldberg.

In an article on Animation World Network there is a bit about the production process they used on the piece . I was interested to note that they used Mirage for the ink & paint. Notice how the drawings have a beautiful, organic hand-colored look , like watercolor washes or markers.

According to the article :

Without pre-sketching or testing, Goldberg animated with ink directly on paper, working in a style he was comfortable with, allowing for a certain amount of boil and spontaneity. He wanted the game's horse character to have the same scratchy, rubber-hose freedom of the Fleischer and Krazy Kat cartoons.

His wife, Susan Goldberg , assisted as art director, and his two daughters helped with mattes. Using Shake for compositing and Mirage for ink-and-paint, Scott Johnston helped achieve the animation's watercolor look.
Goldberg was committed to putting in as much technical detail as possible, such as the secondary action of the horse's reigns (animated by Todd Jacobson), because it makes the piece more convincing and compelling to watch. Goldberg feels this added effort adds a quality and touch that really sells the whole illusion.

As I've mentioned before, the application called "Mirage" is no longer available as such . The company that used to sell Mirage , Bauhaus Software, no longer sells it . However the software development company (TVPaint Development Co.) that originally developed Mirage has taken over and is now marketing a much improved version of Mirage as TVP Animation.

Peg Hole Registration with TVP Animation

2008-03-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

Even though TVP Animation is great for tablet-based paperless animation , it is also very useful for traditional hand-drawn animation pencil tests.

When scanning drawings it is much faster to use an Auto Document Feed scanner . However, drawings scanned with an ADF scanner are not precisely registered. The peg holes on the individual drawings may shift quite a bit when running through the ADF scanner rollers , causing the drawings to jitter . The peg holes must be aligned.

This is done with the soon-to-be released TVP 9.5 improved Peg Holes Registration function . Drawings are scanned in off-pegs, but are then easily registered and aligned. (previous versions of TVP have used the "2-Point Stabilization" function in the FX Panel to accomplish peg-hole tracking and registration which worked fine, but was not as simple and easy to use as the new Peg Hole Registration function)

Here is an example.

1.) In the first part the peg holes on the raw scans are unaligned and the drawings shift & jitter .

2.) In the second part it shows the same set of drawings with the peg holes aligned using TVP Peg Hole Registration.

(play it twice through for comparison of the before and after)

Here is the complete rough animation of this scene:

This scene is from a pilot for a film that was never completed. I had the drawings from my first rough pass on the scene , so decided to use those as a demonstration of how Peg Hole Tracking & Registration works in TVP Animation.